Future-Proof Your Business by Upskilling and Reskilling Your Employees

Viren Kapadia January 25, 2021
Future-Proof Your Business by Upskilling and Reskilling Your Employees

Adopting a culture of continuous learning in your business means focusing on upskilling and reskilling your workforce to be future-ready for challenges that your company may face.

In a survey 40% of employers have admitted that they don’t track the skills of their employees, a lot of us are putting ourselves at a disadvantage by doing so.

By enrolling your employees in learning & development programs you can create a degree of “future-proofing” in your business by continuing ahead of the curve on any skills that are shifting with future developments & changes in technologies. With the support of learning technologies, prevent the business from being caught flat-footed and having to invest heavily to try and catch up.

Invest in your workforce and future proof your business by focusing on what makes you different – your people!

It comes without saying that e-learning/LMS is the best way to manage professional development. Hence, most companies love investing in a business LMS to fulfill their workforce training needs. For businesses, LMS has become an aid that saves them not just money, but time as well. So If this didn’t convince you to refocus your strategy, we’ve created a rundown of some of the top benefits of future-proofing your workforce through upskilling and reskilling and time to get started with our GyrusAim business LMS.

1. Define skills gaps:

Before getting down to the work of turning difficulties into opportunities, there are four key questions businesses must ask when addressing skills gaps to help define their actions:

  • Do the skills we need now present in the current workforce?
  • Are we prepared internally for the roles/skills we need in 3 to 5 or 10 years from now?
  • Are we able to source externally and recruit for the skills we need now?
  • Will the skills we need in the future be available externally at that time?

Then comes your tactics to address skills gaps. There are mainly three steps organizations can take to address skills gaps:

Evaluate : Focus on current skills gaps first. Before doing assessments, the business should also look at market data and trends in different geographies to determine the specific skills that may be in short source in those areas.

Create an opportunity : Consider not only official training programs but less formal on-the-job training, to build skills. This will allow and inspire people to apply their skills and interests outside of their work team.

Organize formal opportunities : Formal and informal mentoring, and online learning are just a few of the methods for helping employees build skills and develop aptitudes that are not necessarily part of their job description but are valuable to the organization and their personal & professional growth.

2. Safeguard your workforce against market disruptions:

employees’ skills, identifying skills gaps in the workforce that need closing, and are continuously working on closing them, you set your organization up for growth.

3. Pick what features are needed to have vs nice to have:

Building on what you want to achieve, start familiarising yourself with the standard features and functions that LMSs have – such as set-up, fully reactive systems, course creators, events, translation, etc. – then make a decision based on what is essential for your needs.

As learners continuously react to the market and gain the skills required, they become an adaptable force that can shift and twist with any changes in the market.

As a result, employees have a greater wealth of knowledge and react to what the industry demands, letting you leverage their skills to carry your business through all ups & downs.

3. Learn the skills of tomorrow:

Businesses should conduct regular skills analysis so that both learners and owners can predict where their industry is heading and accordingly focus on updating their knowledge & skills.

Also market-alignments, future-forward mindset allows you to better align with business goals and strategies, upskilling and reskilling your workforce will prepare them for coming challenges.

4. Retain the top Performers:

You may be tired of hearing about it but it’s true – Millennials are now the majority in the workforce, and we have to be prepared to listen to what their demands are

Not only this generation, but your employees of older generations are also starting to ask for more opportunities to upskill in their role. This demand comes with a shift in career mentality, as employees look to move up within your company, rather than changing companies to get that promotion

We need to realize that retaining your top performers and upskilling them means focusing on your company’s goals. These two are tied together and as one grows, so does the other.

5. Reduce costly hiring:

We all know the cost of hiring new employees, and the cost of losing a trained old employee. While learning can guard against your best people quitting, it also allows you to create a better working environment for your current workforce.

Businesses should see possibilities in the people that they already have, hiring/promoting internally results in a shorter time to productivity and much lower cost implications than recruiting new profiles, while also giving current employees a motivation to stay with the organization, learn and develop.

6. Technology plays a vital role in upskilling and reskilling:

While technology is driving a substantial amount of change that needs a skills transformation for the employees, it also offers an opportunity to bind skills for enhanced results.

Technology, on the other hand, can scale infinitely. A simple database will do, but with GyrusAim business LMS you can have ways to track employee skills on a more defined level.

7. Soft skills are highly in demand:

The hardest-to-find skills are insignificantly soft skills, such as leadership, communication, and listening. The higher up in the organization, the greater the percentage of soft skills that are required for the role: 67% for entry-level and individual contributors; 75% for mid-level positions, and 82% for senior positions.

While adaptability becomes a more important quality as an employee moves up in an organization, industry, dynamic changes in the industry, and company growth stages are also factors that influence learning & development requirements.

Thus, the three most popular approaches for addressing skills gaps are training programs, leadership in high-potential employees, and leadership development programs with flexible work arrangements.

When you put the learning & development together, the training gives the learning and the coaching provides the support for behavioral changes. This is when we see employees evolving the knack and need to learn, which reflects a growth mindset in them. Hence, using an LMS, you cannot just train your employees, but also motivate them to meet your organization’s goal from the very first day of work.